Air Carrier Flight 3123
Beech 1900 · Incident: fire en route
From Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (CLE) to Capital Region International Airport (LAN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96IA191
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Incident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Beech 1900
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 1900
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N81538
- Operator
- Air Carrier
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (CLE), Cleveland, OHTo Capital Region International Airport (LAN)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · descent
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Fire
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Anti-ice/deice system, windshield › Shorted
- Manufacturer › Acft/equip, inadequate design
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Lansing, MI, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot-in-command reported smelling smoke during descent. Smoke was coming out of the bottom left corner of the first officer's windscreen. The first officer, using the portable halon fire extinguisher, extinguished a 6 to 8 inch flame that had erupted from behind the glareshield. The PIC completed the approach and landing. Examination of the windshield by the manufacturer indicated that the source of the excessive heat that caused the windshield and aircraft materials to smoke and ultimately burn, was determined to be arcing of a damaged low power braided copper lead wire. The examiner reported that, 'It is, however, our opinion that the damage was done to the braid wire during the windshield manufacturing process.' The origin of the fracture of the inboard glass ply was in the bottom center post corner area located near the low power terminal block. The examiner reported that, 'the glass fracture occurred as a result of the intensive heat due to electrical arcing of the severed low power lead wire.'
Probable cause
the short in the windshield anti-ice low power braided copper lead wire caused a fire that had resulted from the manufacturer's inadequate design.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96IA191
- Event ID
- 20001208X05914
- Case number
- CHI96IA191
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 200a11034abec8cb5431f2daf294712b30ecc3a0b8a27b6b6633f286ae2828a6; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:50:01.193Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N81538; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.